Contents

Desktop

The Linux desktop has long had most of the apps anyone could ever really need. Sure, it doesn’t have some specific applications, like Adobe Photoshop or Quicken, but it had other apps. Such as Gimp for Photoshop and GNUCash for Quicken and QuickBooks that can do the job. Lately, however, companies that have supported Linux are moving away from the Linux desktop and that worries me. These companies and groups are: Adobe, Google, and Mozilla.

The first one doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Adobe has long had a “difficult” relationship with Linux. We, the Linux community, wanted the full Adobe suite and what we got was Adobe AIR, Flash, and Acrobat. Well, we used to get AIR and Flash anyway. In February, Adobe announced that Adobe Flash Player 11.2 would be the last native version for Linux.

Kernel Space

The Linux 3.5 kernel will introduce support for the Sound Core3D audio cards that were launched by Creative last year.

Announced last year was the Creative Sound Core3D audio processors as the long-awaited successor to the Creative X-Fi audio processors. When the Creative X-Fi sound cards were introduced more than a half-decade ago, the Linux support for these sound cards were a big issue. There wasn’t any support at first (Microsoft Vista made Creative Labs dupe Linux), Creative then released a binary-only Linux X-Fi driver and to make matters worse was Linux x86_64-only. In the end, Creative’s binary Linux X-Fi driver was unmaintainable so they ended up joining the open-source bandwagon.

Graphics Stack

Prior to LinuxTag Berlin later in the week, I have been visiting with Egbert Eich, the SUSE engineer, long-time X.Org developer, and former RadeonHD driver developer. Among the many Linux graphics topics being discussed in Frankfurt-Darmstadt, Egbert and I realized “that project to come up with an open-source graphics card” hadn’t been heard of in years. Hell neither of us could recall the name of the main project even though it was presented just four years ago at FOSDEM.

New Releases

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

Just two weeks after the Release Candidate, the final release of Magiea 2 was made available today. Mageia is a spinoff from the Mandriva distribution, which was created by a group of Mandriva developers and contributors because of the uncertainty about the future of Mandriva, and the long (and ever-increasing) delay in new Mandriva releases. In that regard this is a timely release, since there is once again discussion about the current and future state of Mandriva itself. As I see it, the Mageia 1 release was this teams way of proving that they could in fact accomplish what they set out to do, that being to set up a new distribution based on the state of Mandriva at that time. While there was a huge amount of work involved in that, the majority of it involved building the base for the distribution, getting all the bits in place, making sure that it all worked and that a finished product would come out the other end. There was a lot of “updating” in that release, especially because Mandriva itself had fallen pretty badly behind by the time they forked it, but there wasn’t a lot of new development or innovation in it. I see Mageia 2 as being the first time that they could really spread their wings, and they have done a very nice job of it.

Red Hat Family

Western Australian regional and remote electricity provider, Horizon Power, and oil and gas producer, Santos, have implemented technologies from open source company, Red Hat.

Santos selected Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5 and an open source thin client solution as it was seeking a cost-effective system that enables performance, simplified administration, improved data management, more support and avoiding third-party costs.

Red Hat Inc. (RHT) (RHT), the largest seller of the open-source Linux operating system, fell after an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. projected a slowdown in billings growth.

The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company declined 3.4 percent to $54.43 at the close in New York, for the third-worst performance in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The stock (RHT) has climbed 32 percent this year.

Engine Yard has announced that JRuby core team members Thomas Enebo and Charles Nutter are leaving the company to join Red Hat in an apparently friendly deal between the two firms. According to Red Hat’s Mark Little, bringing the two developers to the company “has been almost 2 years in the making”. In addition to JRuby, they will be working with various teams within JBoss and Red Hat on projects such as TorqueBox, Immutant and OpenJDK. Nutter commented on Twitter saying “I feel like this is my opportunity to really start contributing to OpenJDK rather than just evangelizing”.

Fedora

I’m happy to announce the existence of libusbx, a fork of libusb,. a bit late I must admit, as libusbx has been available for a while now, but as one of the people behind it I still wanted to mention it on my blog.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Between Windows and Linux builds, I use each equally. This is partially because I’m a developer and also because Linux allows me to fully customize its desktop environment to meet my needs. This is pretty much the main reason people use Linux aside from the fact the OS is a lightning-fast open-source OS which continuously focuses on improving usability and functionality with every build and is constantly updated significantly. However, rather than changing core elements of usability and functionality, canonical has decided to focus more on simplifying the effort of finding files in a number of unique ways in the latest build released last month.

While Linux users may suffer the stereotype of being cheap, that isn’t stopping open source OEMs from courting customers willing to pay premium prices for premium PCs. Case in point: eRacks recently introduced a new line of high-end desktops, and System76 followed suit with the debut of the Gazelle Professional Laptop, which, for all its power, actually prices out quite competitively with PCs subject to the “Windows tax.”

The tiny Linux device which has lived up to its hype has now given more reasons to buy this device. In a blog post Liz discloses that the foundation is working on an experimental camera which will be released later this year.

Wind River’s support offerings for Intel DPDK include standard and premium support. Premium support includes a dedicated team of managers and engineers, service level agreements, detailed reports and extensive onsite coaching assistance. Wind River Test Management and Wind River Simics simulation tools also work seamlessly with the Intel DPDK and Wind River Linux as well as many other Linux distributions.

As we’ve reported, the diminutive $25 Linux computer dubbed Raspberry Pi is attracting developers and tinkerers, and we’ve also noted that it could succeed where projects like One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) ran into roadblocks–in the educational market. In fact, the tiny devices (see the motherboard shown here) have already drawn interest from educational system and technology industry leaders. Now, in a very promising step for the Raspberry Pi movement, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has pledged to give U.K. schools Raspberry Pis and pledged to train 100 teachers in how to pass Linux skills onto students.

Even if the Raspberry Pi is under-powered for desktop work, I have only high regard for the stated goal of the design: an affordable platform for the next generation of hardware and software designers. Considering that the higher-end model is a mere US$35 (plus shipping, handling, and tariffs), the actual bang-for-the-buck is amazing.

“The North American mobile market is changing,” asserted Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot. “Stats show that, for the first time, contract renewals are down. People are switching to pay-as-you-go plans that cost less than half as much per month, often with fewer limitations. These customers are buying their devices outright, not having the cost hidden away in an expensive multiyear contract, and Google’s plan is a natural for them.”

At this year’s IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, security researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) announced the launch of the Android Malware Genome Project. The goal of the new initiative is to find, collect and analyse Android malware and share it with other researchers around the world.

Owners of Android handsets can be forgiven for feeling frustration over how long it took to get an update from the 2.3 “gingerbread” release. Google’s flat-out effort to improve tablet support led to a 3.0 (“honeycomb”) release that was not deemed suitable for handset use—or for open-source release. It was only with the 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS) cycle that all that new code became available for handsets—sort of. Six months after the 4.0 release, your editor finally got his hands on a device that can run it; what follows is a review of sorts.

When we played with Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 at Mobile World Congress one complain that we had was there was no place to hold the S-Pen, the core feature of Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Considering the fact that S-Pen was the integral part of the tablet the missing slot was a deal-breaker. It’s more like missing SIM card slot for a smart-phone.

HTC’s official Android 4.0 update list includes the majority of the phones which have been rolled out within the past 12-18 months. We’re glad HTC will be keeping most of its newer phone up to date, but we did miss one important piece which was tucked inside HTC’s list. HTC’s Android tablets (the HTC Flyer, EVO View 4G and Jetstream) will not be updated to Android 4.0.

HTC did not explain why their tablet lineup was being abandoned. When it comes to hardware, the HTC flyer variants and the HTC Jetstream have more than capable of handling Google’s latest Android built. But the issue probably has more to do with HTC’s tablet strategy than anything else.

Rugged Android Tablet Redefines Tonka-Tough… and UglyDesigned to be used by those who are actively getting shot at in warzones, not just those of us who are clumsy with our gadgets, the new Rampage 6 tablet is even more rugged than Panasonic’s Toughbook tablet. Though, far less capable.

You see, since 2003 open source has been intertwined with Brazil’s government, which claims to have realized hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings. Critics with something to lose–notably Microsoft–claim that government workers immediately load up their Linux workstations with Windows, making the open-source desktop an illusion. Besides, Microsoft says, its software offers “better value” when the benefits are weighed against the costs.

When Richard Hughes, founder of Hughski Limited announced an “open source” colorimeter with full GPL source code and even Linux support late last year, he offered a developers’ discount for testers and early adopters. So I was quick to give him a nod on that one. A few weeks ago I was informed that now I could have one if I still wanted it, and I did. And two days ago my ColorHug arrived, and here it is:

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

The Greek municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis, just east of Thessaloniki, is migrating all of its PCs to the free and open source suite LibreOffice, with the help of the Greek Linux User Group. Greeklug explains in a statement published on 27 March that it has finished the migration from a proprietary office suite on 91 PCs. Still to be migrated are 45 PCs.

Education

This is something that has mattered to me for all my teaching career. When training, I took Terry McLoughlin’s optional philosophy of education module; this was the best bit of the course, certainly the one that had the most lasting effect on me as an educator. After three years of a maths degree to sit in seminars where students took responsibility for introducing each week’s topics seemed revolutionary then. We talked and thought about what education was for, something we find a little time for now in my own lectures at Roehampton. The idea that captivated me then, and remains the touchstone for me still, is that of rational autonomy.

Business

Open source Business Intelligence (BI) vendor Actuate has gone on the tech dating game and formed a new collaboration to match its BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) with the Hortonworks data platform to enable big data visualisation technologies.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Project Releases

Nearly three years after the last major release of Nmap, version 6.0 of the open source network scanner has been released. Nmap is a popular utility for scanning and mapping network ranges to extract information about the systems attached to the network and the network’s topology. In version 6.0, the developers have added full IPv6 support while enhancing Nmap’s scripting engine, web scanning, mapping GUI and scanning performance, while also introducing a new tool called Nping.

Public Services/Government

The first Open Government Summit will take place on May 30th in Central Hall Westminster, London and will examine how the open source model allows public sector organisations to be more efficient, save money, meet mission-critical IT demands and improve their services.

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “The advantages of open source for government IT are well documented and will lead to efficiencies and savings in the delivery of public services. How to implement open source solutions most effectively is an important matter, and I am pleased that the summit is devoting time to discussing it.”

Greek public administrations in practice use almost no open source, in spite of a law approved by the Greek parliament in 2011 that promotes the development of open source. European funded initiatives like Open-Source for European Public Administrations (Osepa) could change that, those involved say.

Openness/Sharing

This one is for all those autonomous vehicle makers out there who need a cheap autopilot system to make it go. Among the bits of awesome seen at the 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire, was the ArduPilot Mega 2.0 (APM2) from 3D Robotics, a complete open source autopilot system.

Open Data

Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other “Open” movements such as open source, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established, but the term “open data” itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov.

Open Access/Content

Last week, Winston Hide committed what he called “a toxic career move.” Hide, an associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, publicly resigned from the editorial board of Genomics, an influential journal in his field.

“No longer can I work for a system that provides solid profits for the publisher while effectively denying colleagues in developing countries access to research findings,” he wrote in a piece for the Guardian. “I cannot stand by any longer while access to scientific resources is restricted.”

Open Hardware

SparkFun is not like BMW. We will never be the company to produce the luxury market version of breakout boards and development tools. I believe the only way SparkFun will survive this quickly changing world is to be malleable. We have to be ready to change.

One of the things I spend a fair amount of time doing at work is compiling my C/C++ code and looking at the disassembly output. Call me old-fashioned, but I think sometimes the only way to really grok your code is to see what the processor will actually execute. Particularly with some of the newer features of C++11 — lambdas, move constructors, threading primitives etc — it’s nice to be able to see how your elegant code becomes beautiful (and maybe even fairly optimal) machine code.

Standards/Consortia

Hardware

Finance

Remember the case over Goldman Sachs’s Hudson CDOs, in which U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote a scalding opinion in March? Marrero refused to dismiss fraud claims against the bank, in a ruling that detailed Goldman Sachs’s alleged scheme to shed exposure to subprime mortgages by dumping toxic collateralized debt obligations on an unsuspecting public. This week Goldman had a little something to say about the case, and — surprise! — it’s not an apology.

Internet/Net Neutrality

You may recall that, back in March, on a whim based on a discussion at SXSW, Alexis Ohanian and Erik Martin (from Reddit) teamed up with Holmes Wilson (from Fight for the Future) to crowdfund a billboard to go up in Lamar Smith’s district in Austin. It turns out that you internet people don’t mind paying after all, and helped fund two billboards which have now gone up in Smith’s district, including one across the street from his office in San Antonio, and a second one on “Lamar Blvd” in Austin

The head of the Federal Communications Commission said he supports cable companies’ charging for Internet based on how much a subscriber uses the service, and also welcomed a cable industry initiative to share Wi-Fi hotspots around the country.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

ACTA

Next week, parliamentary committees of the European Parliament will vote on ACTA. Citizens keen to see this agreement rejected must act and contact members of the legal affairs (JURI), industry (ITRE) and civil liberties (LIBE) committees, who will cast their votes on the 30th and 31st of May.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again